


Keep Your Enemies Close

by mithrel



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Gen, Humor, Podfic Welcome, Prank Wars, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2038131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a straightforward (if unplanned) prank war between Tony and Barnes. But then someone else gets involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Your Enemies Close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Krystalicekitsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krystalicekitsu/gifts).



He hadn’t meant to get in a prank war with Barnes.

But one day he’d woken up to find the left arm of all his suits painted silver. Barnes’ comment of “Like the update?” had confirmed he was the culprit.

Tony’d retaliated by buying a sewing machine and sewing all of Barnes’ left sleeves shut. 

And then had to use it to re-sew all of his _own_ left sleeves, that Barnes had cut off.

So Tony went to the range and replaced all his practice weapons with extremely realistic squirtguns and a few that shot out flags saying “BANG!”

The next day, Tony found his music library had been replaced with Justin Bieber, Rebecca Black and OneDirection. And, ok, so that pissed him off, but he had to give Barnes kudos for creativity, even if he probably had help on that one.

He spent that night prying off all the keys on Barnes’ laptop and putting them on in the wrong order. It was a bitch to do, but Barnes wasn’t much of a typist and tended to go at it hunt-and-peck, without looking at the screen. His stream of invective when he looked up to find a laboriously-typed paragraph of gibberish was more than worth it.

And then had to spend twenty minutes unstacking the phone books that completely blocked him in his bedroom.

For the next one, Tony enlisted Barton’s help, since it’s not likely that Barnes would believe anything he said, especially right now. Hearing him exclaim about all the ridiculous things he read on The Onion website, and how could people let that _happen_ was hysterical until someone cracked up and let the cat out of the bag.

The next morning Tony got up to make the coffee as usual, still not quite awake. He waited for it to brew, poured a cup, added sugar, took a sip…and spat it out. “What the _hell_ is this?!”

Barnes looked up from where he had been innocently eating his eggs. “What, you don’t like Earl Grey?”

“So help me, if you threw my coffee out, do you _know_ how much St. Helena coffee costs–“

Barnes waved him off. “Relax, Stark, it’s in a Tupperware container in the cabinet.”

Still, messing with his coffee was uncalled-for. Tony did some quick programming and put a virus on Barnes’ computer, so when he went on the internet he’d be redirected to an extremely deviant, extremely _loud_ porn site. That had the unintended side effect of sending Steve fleeing in embarrassment, his face radiating enough heat to sustain the Tower.

It continued like that until one day when he was in his workshop he felt something sting his ear. He brushed it aside absently and kept working, but then something hit his cheek on the other side.

He looked down to see a couple small balls of rolled-up paper.

“What the–“

He saw the next one coming at him, dodged, and followed the trajectory back to a hole in the wall. As he squinted at it, another paper ball hit him in the eye.

“BARNES!” he bellowed and stormed up the stairs. Pranks were all well and good, but some things were sacred, and his workshop was one of them.

He found him sitting in the living room with Steve.

“JARVIS, kill the TV!”

It obligingly shut off in the middle of the Skipper yelling at Gilligan.

“What the hell, Stark?” Barnes demanded.

“Stay the hell outta my workshop!” he snapped.

Barnes stared at him like he’d spoken in binary, putting his hands up and speaking in a slow voice. “You know I don’t go near that den of horrors you’ve got down there.”

Tony squinted at him. Barnes _looked_ sincere, but all was fair in love and prank wars. “You didn’t poke holes in my workshop walls?”

“No!”

“And set them up to shoot spitballs at me?”

Barnes smirked at that, but he repeated, “No.”

Tony didn’t believe him. He started making plans for something to top all of his other pranks.

Before he got a chance to implement anything, though, Barnes stormed into the kitchen with his hair dripping wet. Also pink.

“I am going to kill you for this,” he said levelly.

Tony couldn’t help cackling. “That’s a good look for you, Barnes.”

Barnes’ fist clenched and Tony’s sense of self-preservation belatedly kicked in. “Whoa, whoa, don’t blame me for this!”

Barnes pulled up short. He still looked suspicious, but now also thoughtful. “And I didn’t go in your workshop…”

“Looks like someone else decided to join the prank war.”

So Tony did what he should have done before, pulling up the surveillance tapes of his workshop. He expected to see Barton, or, hell, maybe even Natasha.

He didn’t expect _Steve._

But there he was, with a drill and some pieces of tubing, setting up the spitballs.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?”

He quickly pulled up the cameras in the hall outside the bathroom, and sure enough, there was Steve, with a bottle.

“That your shampoo?” he asked Barnes.

Barnes squinted at the screen. “Looks like it.”

When Steve came out again, he still had the bottle, but there were little drools of crusted-on shampoo near the lid.

“JARVIS, where’s Steve right now?”

“Captain Rogers is in the gym, sir.”

He didn’t even need to say anything to Barnes, who was already heading towards the elevator.

***

When they got to the gym, Steve was working out on the bag, so he didn’t notice them at first.

“A- _hem!_ ” Barnes said loudly and Steve whirled, his eyes going wide, but then his lips started twitching.

“Hey Buck, what’s up?”

Tony cut in. “Seems Barnes had an unfortunate accident with his shampoo. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Steve?”

To give the guy credit, he didn’t blanch at the silky menace in Tony’s tone. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, sorry.”

“And a few days ago there was an incident in my workshop with spitballs…”

Steve just looked politely interested.

“And the cool thing about the 21st century, Cap, especially here, is that there are cameras _everywhere._ ”

At that Steve went pale.

Bucky turned to him with an evil smile on his face. “Truce?”

Tony grinned back. “Truce.”

They shook hands as Steve fled the room.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Keep Your Enemies Close](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026369) by [KeeperofSeeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperofSeeds/pseuds/KeeperofSeeds)




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